Ecuador

2012

On Sunday the general assembly of the Organization of
American States will convene in Bolivia in the verdant, highland valley city of
Cochabamba. The 35 member states (every nation in the region except Cuba) are
expected to vote on a measure that, if passed, could
curtail free expression and press throughout the hemisphere and put journalists
and others at greater risk.

Stressing concerns of human rights groups about the deterioration
of press conditions under the administration of President Rafael Correa, 17 members
of the United Nations submitted recommendations to Ecuador on freedom of expression
issues before the U.N. Human
Rights Council this week. While Ecuador tried to pass off the criticism as
resulting from ignorance, the states' observations made clear that the
international community is fully aware of Correa's repressive tactics against
the local media.

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Dear Mr. Cordero: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about a new Ecuadoran communications bill currently under debate in the National Assembly that would roll back press freedom by promoting self-censorship and restrictions on criticism of public officials.

New
York, February 27, 2012--Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa announced today
that he would pardon several news managers and journalists he had sued for
libel, but his actions in the cases have done grave damage to free expression
in his country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Correa had won separate
libel complaints against executives of the daily El Universo and authors of
the book The Big Brother concerning reporting critical of his
administration.

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In some Latin American countries, state-owned media are used not only for propaganda but as platforms to smear critics, including journalists. Some elected leaders have even invested in large multimedia holdings to further their agendas. By Carlos Lauría

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The press freedom climate continued its sharp decline under President Rafael Correa. In September, a CPJ special report concluded that Correa’s policies had transformed the country into one of the hemisphere’s most restrictive nations for the press. In March, Correa brought a criminal libel complaint against senior managers of El Universo, the country’s leading critical daily. The case, which centered on a biting opinion column that condemned Correa’s actions in a 2010 standoff with police, resulted in convictions, prison sentences, and multimillion-dollar fines against the managers. The managers were free on appeal in late year. Other government officials also used the nation’s archaic criminal defamation laws to
try to silence journalists. The president made frequent use of cadenas, presidential addresses that pre-empt all private broadcast programming nationwide, to smear individual journalists and news outlets. Although cadenas have traditionally been used to deliver information in times of crisis, they have become a forum for political confrontation under Correa. The administration used other tactics to supplant independent voices with its own perspective, repeatedly ordering individual broadcasters to give over portions of their news programming to government “rebuttals.” In a May referendum, voters approved ballot measures that would allow the administration to regulate news content in vaguely defined areas and force media owners to divest other holdings.

The sentence against Ecuadoran
newspaper El Universo, its opinion
editor, Emilio Palacio Urrutia, and its three top executives, Carlos Eduardo
Pérez Barriga, César Enrique Pérez Barriga, and Carlos Nicolás Pérez Lapentti, for
supposed offenses against Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa in Palacio's
article "NO
to lies," is a worn-out manifestation of the perverse concept
of public freedoms that certain elected governments manipulate. They pervert
their legitimacy with an authoritarian self-assuredness that permeates their exercise
of power.

New York, February 16, 2012--Today's decision by
Ecuador's highest court to uphold the criminal libel conviction brought by President Rafael Correa against El Universo represents a serious blow to
freedom of expression and a setback for democracy, the Committee to Protect
Journalists said.

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New York, February 16, 2012--The Committee to
Protect Journalists is outraged that Ecuador's highest court upheld today a
libel conviction
brought by President Rafael Correa against the Guayaquil-based daily El
Universo.